The Power of Permission

May 23, 2012

The Power of Permission

What have you been wanting to do in your business for a really long time? Perhaps you’ve been wanting to raise your prices. Maybe you want to hire an assistant or another team member but haven’t gotten around to it. Or maybe you want to work less and focus on personal time, but you haven’t taken action for one reason or another.

Ask yourself what project you’ve been thinking about forever but haven’t taken action on. We all have a wish list. The question is, why are we waiting?

What causes us to put these important, yet inconvenient or uncomfortable items on the back burner? In many cases, there’s a really simple answer. Here are three questions you can ask yourself if you would like to get unstuck and move forward with your list of items.

1. What’s it costing me to delay this decision? In six months, will I be better off or worse off having done nothing? This helps you bring a sense of urgency to an item.

2. Do I simply need to give myself permission? It’s surprising how this simple revelation can create the shift you need to gain momentum. Going deeper, this can be a deservability issue, i.e., do I deserve to charge a higher fee? If that’s the case, working on your confidence is something that will help you get unstuck.

3. Am I getting stuck because I don’t feel like I have the skills, or is it possibly a mindset issue? Making the distinction between the need to build skills and the need to work on your mindset can help you determine the next logical step to take. Often, however, it can be both, and in that case, start by parsing out the skills you feel like you need. When you do that, often the mindset will take care of itself.

By habit, we wait for other people’s approvals since we’ve done this all our lives. We’re used to getting the approvals of teachers, parents, professors, bosses, spouses, and relatives, but when we’re in business for ourselves, we don’t need to ask anyone!

Is there something you’ve been delaying that you need to give yourself permission for?